The Isolation and Separation of Niobium and Tantalum Pentoxides from Mineral Concentrates by Liquid-Liquid Extraction

The prospect of obtaining highgrade concentrates from Canadian pyrochlore ores is rather unlikely, and experimental beneficiation processes appear to have yielded products in the range of 3 to 20 per cent N'b205 A possible solution of the problem is to find an economical chemical method for recovering highpurity Nb2O5 from such concentrates. A technically feasible but economically unproved process is outlined in this paper, in which the concentrate is decomposed by an acid attack and the oxides of niobium and tantalum are isolated and then separated by liquid-liquid extraction.